本·赫克特

本·赫克特（Ben Hecht，1894年2月28日—1964年4月18日）美国小说家、剧作家、好莱坞电影编剧。他也是一位犹太复国主义者和人权运动者。著作： 1001 Afternoon in Chicago 是1921年开始连载在芝加哥每日新闻报（The Chicago Daily News)的专栏文章。主要报导每天的社会新闻，情杀案，审判，盗窃，名流绯闻，天气，旅游热点等，使百年前的芝加哥跃然纸上。

影视作品

《意乱情迷》（Spellbound）

《女友礼拜五》（His Girl Friday）

Ben Hecht (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films, including six Academy Award nominations and two wins.

After graduating from high school in 1910, Hecht ran away to Chicago, where, in his own words, he "haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls, and bookshops." In the 1910s and 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, and literary figure. In the late 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit.

The Dictionary of Literary Biography – American Screenwriters calls him "one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures". Hecht received the first Academy Award for Best Story for Underworld (1927). Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics. He also provided story ideas for such films as Stagecoach (1939). Film historian Richard Corliss called him "the Hollywood screenwriter", someone who "personified Hollywood itself". In 1940, he wrote, produced, and directed Angels Over Broadway, which was nominated for Best Screenplay.

Hecht became an active Zionist after meeting Peter Bergson, who came to the United States near the start of World War II. Motivated by what became the Holocaust Hecht wrote articles and plays, such as We Will Never Die in 1943 and A Flag is Born in 1946. Thereafter, he wrote many screenplays anonymously to avoid a British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The boycott was a response to Hecht's active support of paramilitary action against British Mandate for Palestine forces, during which time a Zionist force's supply ship to Palestine was named the S.S. Ben Hecht.

In 1954, Hecht published his highly regarded autobiography, A Child of the Century. According to it, he did not hold screenwriting (in contrast to journalism) in high esteem, and never spent more than eight weeks on a script. In 1983, 19 years after his death, Ben Hecht was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Early years

Hecht was born in New York City on February 28, 1894, the son of Belarusian-Jewish immigrants Joseph Hecht, a worker in the garment industry, and his wife Sarah (née Swernofsky). The couple was from Minsk, Russian Empire, and had married in 1892.

The family moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where Ben attended high school. For his bar mitzvah, his parents bought him four crates full of the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Twain. When Hecht was in his early teens, he would spend the summers with an uncle in Chicago. On the road much of the time, his father did not have much effect on Hecht's childhood, and his mother was busy managing a store in downtown Racine. Film author Scott Siegal wrote, "He was considered a child prodigy at age ten, seemingly on his way to a career as a concert violinist, but two years later was performing as a circus acrobat".

After graduating from Racine High School in 1910, Hecht attended the University of Wisconsin for three days before leaving for Chicago at the age of 16 or 17. He lived with relatives and started a career in journalism. He won a job with the Chicago Daily Journal after writing a profane poem for publisher John C. Eastman to entertain guests at a party. By age seventeen Hecht was a full-time reporter, first with the Daily Journal, and later with the Chicago Daily News. In the aftermath of World War I, Hecht was sent to cover Berlin for the Daily News. While there, he also wrote his first and most successful novel, Erik Dorn (1921). It was a sensational debut for Hecht as a serious writer.